LogoNerds Review: Cheap Logos and the Power of Nerdery

I’ll be the first to admit to a certain degree of animosity against cheap logo sites. Maybe it has to do with my own traumatic past and the promises of “free” logo design being unfulfilled with a price tag attached at the end. I mean, it’s not exactly “free” if you have to pay for it!

But before I go off on a tangent and angrily condemn all cheap logo design services, we have to consider the case of LogoNerds. This is a LogoNerds review, after all.

While not exactly in the same do-it-yourself category as services like LogoMaker, LogoNerds is priced like one: in fact, it’s priced quite a bit lower. And since the LogoNerds.com site promises a much more customized, intensive design process than those present in the do-it-yourselfers, the prospect of hanging out with the LogoNerds suddenly becomes more attractive.

So what are the conclusions? Does this site – clearly lacking taste and even the professionalism I so often crave from my services – deliver where the other cheapos fail to come up strong? Like nerds themselves, we’ll have to look past our initial differences and try to connect with this service on a more personal basis.

Revenge of the Nerds

Accumulating an overall impression of an inexpensive logo designer like LogoNerds usually requires looking at a few variables. I consider the most important variables to be, in no particular order:

Price, especially price relative to marketplace

Quality of designs and portfolio samplings

Level of service and customization to your needs

Ease of use

Upon the initial first impression, LogoNerds actually does seem to excel at all four of these criteria. The price is right – and we’ll get into that – and the portfolio samplings, while not of smashing quality like you might see at a crowd sourcing site, are about in line with what you could expect by opting for a cheap logo designer like LogoNerds. Level of service, customization, and ease of use? Well, that’s where we’ll want to do a little more investigating.

The LogoNerds Process

The actual process at LogoNerds is pretty enticing for an inexpensive logo design site. Signing up is easy to figure out, and the process is explained simply too: in essence, you’ll get to write down your notes, review their initial design, submit your revisions, and then receive your logo. While one set of revisions is not a lot – at all – for the price, it’s actually a very comfortable way of going about things.

After all, some sites will charge you a lot of money (think triple-digits) for just a few revisions. Leave it to a bunch of nerds to offer something of quality for a reduced price: it’s a unique selling point, and I’m always on the lookout for a good unique selling point that would make me want to actually recommend a service to someone.

Pricing and Bang for the Buck

I’m not a big believer in evaluating pricing in a vacuum: it’s all about bang for the buck. While $20 might be great for a logo design, it’s absolutely a terrible price for a cheeseburger. Context, the marketplace, and the overall quality of what you get in return for your money all factor in to the basic pricing question.

So what’s the price already?

So with that in mind, how does LogoNerds stack up on the business side of things? Surprisingly well. It’s price is reduced from that of the do-it-yourself logo makers, which is something I really like, and at $27 bucks for your own “professional web logo,” it’s a great way to get something up on your site quickly and cheaply.

Now if you’re a particularly observant reader you’ll realize that spending $27 for “just” the web logo isn’t all that great a deal, especially considering how I just talked about all that should be considered when you evaluate a price’s quality.

For example, if you can get a web logo here for $27 bucks but can get a whole bucketload of web, print, letterhead, and business card logos at another side for $197 bucks, then the two prices are actually quite comparable, even though they’re not remotely the same on paper.

So in this regard, we’ll have to give the pricing at LogoNerds a “B.” It’s not the greatest, and it’s not the worst – right, LogoYes? – but it’s functional and will get you something quickly. That’s about all you can ask for $27 bucks on the Internet, especially when you’re talking about a service that’s actually tailored to your specific needs.

Are These the Nerds For You?

When considering the curious case of the LogoNerds, I have to ask myself what I would recommend to someone who wanted to get a logo designed online. There are so many options, so many different ways of going about it, that it can be hard to track down one particular tool, or one particular way of doing things.

But one question I can answer immediately is who might enjoy a site like LogoNerds. People with a thin wallet, for sure. People who only have a few logo needs and aren’t looking for an entire re-branding. People who are attracted to the humorless stock photography and not-without-errors web site? Definitely.

Evaluating a web site like LogoNerds does require a bit of context, though: as far as cheap logo design goes, these aren’t the wrong people to check out. The service is quick, cheap, and if it results in a logo you really enjoy and can put up on your web site right away, you can’t really ask for a whole lot more than that. There are certainly worse ways to go about creating a logo online – the do-it-yourself route, for instance.

If that doesn’t sound like an enthralling, four out of five star recommendation for LogoNerds, it wasn’t. But considering LogoNerds doesn’t ask a lot from us, I don’t think it’s fair to ask too much from them. They are a site to consider as you weigh your logo options, and even if they don’t win out in the end, at least they should have made you stop and think just how much a web logo is worth to you.